Dark
by chillywinterbreeze
Summary: The first word that came to Dean's mind when he woke up: Dark
1. Chapter 1

The first word that came to Dean's mind when he woke up: Dark.

That was all there seemed to be, stretching on and on forever. Obviously, it couldn't go on forever, but the darkness combined with the silence made the space seem like it could. He shifted, sitting up, only to find shackles on his wrists binding them to the wall above his head. How he'd missed that until now, Dean didn't know. Maybe the pounding in his skull had something to do with it.

"Hello?" he called. His breath hitched in his chest as he started to panic. What if he was alone here? What if whoever had chained him up had decided to leave him to starve to death? What if? What if? What if?

He was saved by a deep, gravelly voice calling back: "Dean?"

"Cas?"

The angel shifted, his own chains clanking at the movement, "Dean, are you injured?"

"Not badly," he answered. "Is Sam there?"

"No, but he's probably fine. He was at the motel," Cas reassured. Dean heard him whimper. "Dean, while you were unconscious, I think whoever is holding us captive did something to my wings."

"What do you mean?"

"I am in immense pain."

Suddenly, fluorescent lights flooded the space with harsh white light. They revealed a small room, like a storage unit, with a long rail extending around the perimeter. What was really terrifying, though, was Cas.

His wings were visible.

If wasn't so scared by the whole situation, Dean would've found them beautiful. They were jet black with an iridescent sheen. Each feather was a slightly different colour, though. Some were dark blues and purples, others were completely black or grey.

This was wrong. Cas had already told him multiple times that his wings existed in a whole other dimension. They weren't supposed to exist in this one, and the fact that they seemed to have been forced out was worrying.

The unit's door raised up. It was nighttime?

"Hello boys."

* * *

 **Hello my darlings!**

 **Unfortunately, I'm having a large bit of writer's block with my two main stories, so this is kind of an "I'm not dead" piece. It will be a two-shot at least, maybe a couple more parts than that, but this one won't go on forever like** _ **Stay**_ **and** _ **Wayward Child.**_ **I'm about halfway through chapters for both of them and they're just not coming out the way I want them to, so please please please bear with me! I'm trying.**

 **As always, don't forget to favourite, follow and review! Reviews make me happier than a snail with a jetpack! (ya know, so they can go faster)**


	2. Chapter 2

" _Hello boys."_

The open door revealed a woman dressed in white, her wild curls blowing slightly in the evening breeze. The pale fabric made her warm, caramel coloured skin seem flawless and giving both Dean and Cas the impression that she may be a minor goddess. Most captivating, though, were her eyes, which were a deep brown that seemed to just keep going. If she hadn't been holding them captive, Dean would've been almost desperate to get her into bed with him.

"Who are you?" he demanded, forcing himself to ignore how beautiful she was. If he gave her the chance, she might try to use it against him. "What do you want with us?"

She laughed warmly like he'd just cracked her favourite joke, "Easy, sugar; one at a time. My name is Jada."

"What do you want with us?" Dean snarled. She may be beautiful, but she was already getting on his nerves.

"I don't want anything with you," Jada explained. "It's the angel I'm interested in. You were just in the way and you caused me a fair bit of trouble. I didn't want you tracking us."

Cas groaned quietly on the other side of the unit, "What do you want with me?"

Jada smiled, moving to kneel down in front of him. With one quick motion, she reached forward and plucked three feathers from near the base of his left wing as he howled in pain. Dean struggled against his bonds, shouting that he'd kill her if she touched Cas again.

"Oh quiet," she snapped in annoyance, waving a hand in his direction. "They'll grow back just fine."

"What," Cas repeated, panting as he recovered from the pain. "Do you want from me?"

Patting his knee, Jada stood up and headed over to where Dean was still struggling against his bonds. "Do you know how powerful angel feathers are for spellwork? Grace? Tears? Blood? Even the most skilled witches only have a single feather or a few drops of blood at a time. I've got an entire angel!"

Dean nodded. "You're a witch," he spat.

"No, sugar, I'm a businesswoman."

With that, she lowered the door, leaving them alone again.

* * *

 _Two days later…_

Cas was starting to get weak. He wasn't talking as much as he had in the beginning, instead leaning his head against his shoulder and wrapping his wings around himself for warmth. His shirt was gone, probably removed by Jada to give his wings room to materialize. Like Dean, his hands were bound above his head.

"Dean?" he breathed after an achingly long silence.

"What is it buddy?" the hunter replied, still searching for anything he could use to pick the lock on his shackles. So far, he hadn't found so much as a nail in the wall that he could get to.

"How do the two of us always manage to have the worst luck in this universe?"

"I don't know man," Dean chuckled.

The door raised up again and Jada stepped through, "Imagine that. I've already got an order for a couple of angel tears."

Cas lifted his head. "As a good friend of mine once said, bite me," he snarled weakly. She laughed.

"Oh, I intend to," Jada laughed. "This offer will earn me more money than I could make selling every feather and every drop of your blood for a year. I'll do whatever the hell I have to to make you shed a few tears."

"You would have to do more to me than you are physically capable."

Dean sat silently, watching the whole thing go down. He knew that no matter what he said, he'd only make things worse for them in the long run. All he could do to help his friend now was make sure he found some way to get them out of here.

It wasn't easy, though. In fact, to sit silently while his best friend was tortured went against everything he stood for. But he did. Cas was beaten and sliced at and poked and prodded in so many ways, Dean was sure he'd never get the angel's screams out of his ears. It was the kind of wrong that chilled him to the bone.

* * *

What felt like hours passed. Although Dean was fairly certain that it had only been a little while, Jada was growing impatient. Her dress was stained with blood splattered down the front, and her eyes had a glint in them that Dean vaguely remembered from the Pit. She didn't even seem human anymore.

"Why won't you just drop a tear already?!" She shouted. Each word was punctuated by harsh blows, but they only earned small groans from the now exhausted Castiel. "I guess I'm just gonna have to get really creative."

Picking up the small bag that Dean had been eyeing, she pulled out a jar of holy oil. Dean hoped she'd just use it for a spell to make his friend cry. He was wrong.

Instead, she poured the liquid over both of the angel's wings, listening to him whimper as he was weakened by its properties.

"Last chance," she warned. There was a book of matches in her hand. Dean half prayed that Cas would just give in.

With all the strength he seemed to have left, Cas lifted his head and spat blood onto her skirt.

Jada struck one of the matches, "Wrong decision."

* * *

 **I don't really have anything to say today except that I already have part of the next chapter prewritten. Guys, this is probably among the darkest pieces I've ever written, and I've written some pretty dark stuff before.**

 **As always, don't forget to favourite, follow and review! I don't really have a happier-than this time. I've gotta go look at some pictures of puppies and stuff.**


	3. Chapter 3

She dropped the burning match onto Castiel's right wing, watching as the feathers went up in flames. Whatever sounds Dean had heard before from the angel now seemed like nothing at all compared to the wails he was hearing now. Every light in the room blew out, leaving them in darkness save for the light provided by Castiel's burning wings. The door flew off the unit and slammed into another building.

Dean was screaming too, crying, pulling hard at his own shackles. He could feel blood running down his forearms and the little bones in his wrists snapping, but he didn't care anymore. He just needed to stop her.

As the fire went out, Cas's screams dampened down into choked sobs. Jada dropped to her knees and placed a little vial under his eye.

"GET AWAY FROM HIM!" Dean screamed hoarsely. It broke his heart to see his friend, who was so stubborn and powerful, lose a battle he'd fought so hard on.

"Shut up," Jada ordered as the vial filled up. "I warned him that I'd do whatever I had to. I'm only sorry I didn't pluck all of his feathers before I burned them. I would've been able to sell those too if I had."

She stood up and capped the vial, "Now, since he blew the door off with those God awful shrieks of his, you can both be cold tonight."

Once they were alone, Cas wept openly. Everything hurt him: moving, breathing, even being completely still. It felt as though his wings were still blazing even though he knew, logically, that that was impossible.

Most of all, though, he was humiliated. He'd chosen to remain stubborn against Jada. After all, she was merely human, even if she was a witch. He hadn't believed she'd actually hurt his wings. He hadn't believed she'd be able to.

It had been an arrogant thought, and he was definitely paying for it.

"Cas?" Dean called. He sounded desperate, but Castiel didn't have the strength to answer. "Cas, hang in there, buddy. Don't go to sleep. I'm getting us out of here."

The hunter awkwardly toed off his boots and worked off his socks, never taking his eyes off the small hairpin Jada had accidentally dropped on the floor a few feet away. If he could get to it, he'd be able to get them out of here.

Apparently, his legs weren't long enough. Even stretching as far as he could, he could just barely nudge the hairpin with his big toe. That wasn't good enough. He tried to relax the muscles in his shoulders and ignore the pain in his wrists to stretch a little farther, but he just couldn't manage to grip it between his toes.

 _Well I know what I'm working on when we get home,_ he thought in frustration. Finally, after what seemed like hours of trying, he finally managed to grab the hairpin and drag it closer. Then the challenge of picking it up began. Eventually he settled for squashing it between his feet and bringing it up to grab between his teeth. He gagged at the nasty taste of foot sweat and hairspray, but somehow managed not to drop it and to manipulate it into his hands.

After that, they were practically home free. Dean uncuffed and picked up his now silent friend to get him as far away as possible, even though he knew every motion would be like starting the fire all over again. All he had to do was get his friend to safety without him going into shock. Could angels go into shock? Dean wasn't risking it. All he knew was that the hard part was just starting.

* * *

 **Ever come up with an idea that is so wrong you're actually mad at yourself for thinking of it? That's how this went.**

 **Anyway, don't forget to favourite, follow and review. Reviews will always cheer me up!**


	4. Chapter 4

Sam pulled up to the alley Cas and Dean were hiding in. It'd been almost two hours since he'd gotten the frantic call from his brother, and he was worried about what he might find. All he knew was that something had happened to Cas and that it was bad. Really bad.

Jumping out of the car and grabbing the first aid kit, Sam made his way down to the end of the alley. There he found Cas, lying facedown on the ground, shivering despite the heat and humidity. What was really frightening, though, was the sight of his wings. The fact that he could see them was bad enough, but they looked mangled and burned, a thin sheen of blood covering the flesh. There were charred bits of what looked like feathers, but Sam couldn't be sure the way they were seared to the muscle. They could've just been bits of skin.

"What happened?" he demanded, kneeling down to check the burns. Dean shook his head.

"Psycho witch wanted to sell his tears so she burned his wings."

Sam ran back to the Impala for the jug of holy water they kept in the trunk. It'd work well enough to rinse the burns. When he poured it on Cas's wings, though, the angel flapped them frantically, smacking one of them into Sam's head by accident. He howled at the contact, curling them as close to him as he could manage and whimpering like a child.

If not for the wingspan, Sam would've loaded the angel into the Impala and taken the three of them as far away as he could before treating him. But each wing was at least fifteen feet long and as wide as Sam's torso was long. There was no way they'd be able to fit him into the car without them touching the seats, and Sam couldn't imagine the kind of torture that would be.

Instead, he had Dean check them into a motel nearby and snuck Cas into their room once his brother had gotten the key.

Treating the angel was no small task. Every time Sam would get near his wings, Cas would flap them to try and get away and he'd just end up hurting himself even more. Eventually, Dean injected him with a sedative that could knock out an elephant. It definitely helped, though, that Cas was as exhausted as he was. After that, they went through every bandage, gauze roll, and bottle of ointment they owned in order to get Cas as patched up as they could and left him to sleep for a while before the pain got to be too intense.

* * *

After he got Cas taken care of, Sam took a look at Dean's injuries. His wrists and hands had swollen up five times their size and had turned a sickening shade of purple. Now that the adrenaline was finally wearing off, he was starting to have a difficult time moving his hands, and the pain was getting almost unbearable.

Sam wrapped them in a splint with an ace bandage, "How'd you manage this?"

Dean took a deep breath. "She set him on fire, Sammy," he explained, voice breaking. "I couldn't just sit there, but she had me chained up."

"You can't do that, though, Dean. You almost bored them down to the bone. I wouldn't have been able to patch that up," Sam explained. His brother huffed in annoyance, swallowing a couple of painkillers with a bit of whiskey.

"He was screamin' Sam. He blew out the damn door."

There was nothing more to be said. Once Sam had finished wrapping Dean's wrists, the older man headed over to Cas's bed.

The angel looked peaceful, more so than he'd looked in years. Every once in a while, his wings would twitch as he dreamed, but it didn't seem to be bothering him. Dean stretched out beside him and ran his unbandaged fingers through his hair. Cas nuzzled into the touch like a child, which Dean let out a small chuckle at.

"I'll be here when you wake up," he promised.

* * *

 **Okay guys, so you get a choice here. There are two possible routes I can take with this story, and I have drafts of equal quality written for both.**

 **Route A: Platonic friendship is strengthened by the ordeal and no romantic feelings are introduced.**

 **Route B: Friendship is strengthened by the ordeal and romantic feelings are discovered.**

 **If I don't get any votes, I can just flip a coin, but I'd like to know what y'all want to see.**

 **As always, don't forget to favourite, follow and review! Reviews make me happier than a Whovian in a TARDIS!**


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